


Welcome to Heaven, Jack Harkness

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Afterlife, M/M, Missy Being Missy (Doctor Who), Post-Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Series 03: Children of Earth (Torchwood), Spoilers for Episode: s08e11 Dark Water, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, The Torchwood Crew Is Getting Pretty Damn Tired of Jack Dying All the Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29699652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: “I’ve died hundreds of times,” Jack said. “This has never happened before.”The bland-looking man on the other side of the desk had the nerve to look sceptical. “Are you sure?”“Extremely,” he retorted. “Death and I, we’re practically childhood pals at this point. I die, there’s nothing, and then I wake up again. So stop this whole charade and tell me where I really am.”“I’m afraid I don’t have a different answer for you,” Seb said apologetically. “This is the Underworld. The Promised Land. The Nethersphere. Aka: where you go when you die.”[Pre-Children of Earth: during one of Jack’s temporary deaths, he wakes up in Missy’s version of “Heaven,” much to their mutual annoyance.]
Relationships: Jack Harkness & Missy, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	Welcome to Heaven, Jack Harkness

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: Between “Exit Wounds” and “Children of Earth” (late 2008 to early 2009)

_“Security breach. Security breach. Security breach—”_

“I know, I _know,”_ Jack Harkness grumbled as he ran down the corridor of the ship, trying to remember exactly how far away the escape hatch was from his current position.

Of course, the alarm didn’t care either way, and continued intoning _“Security breach. Security breach,”_ with the reliable placidity of something that knows that _it_ has nothing to fear from the current chaos.

And yes, Jack _was_ the one who triggered the alarm, but the ship shouldn’t have even been here to begin with. His life would be so much easier if the rest of the damn galaxy would stop using the Cardiff Rift as some kind of intergalactic truck stop.

But his life was never easy, which was why he was running as fast as he could after trying to trigger the self-destruct mechanism, failing, and settling for good old-fashioned explosives instead.

The next few minutes—seconds, probably—would determine whether Jack was about to escape (unlikely), get vaporized by the ship’s security system (not ideal), or be blown to bits by his own explosives (comparatively preferable?).

It turned out to be a tie: just as Jack heard the detonations, his body was enveloped by an agonizing shock, and then everything went dark.

* * *

When Jack opened his eyes, he saw—rather than a burning ship around him or a mildly nauseous Ianto leaning over him—an office.

There was a desk in front of him, a plastic chair underneath him, and a bland-looking man in a suit on the other side of the desk.

“Oh, hello. Are you sitting comfortably?” the man asked, looking up from the stack of papers he was working on.

“Where am I?” Jack asked, looking around. There must have been a teleportation device in the ship that brought him here, which implied all sorts of sinister things about its arrival on Earth.

“Would you like a coffee?” the man inquired. On the desk, there was a nameplate identifying him as “Seb.”

“Where am I?” he repeated, a little more firmly this time.

“Ah, well, I suppose it’s best to cut to the chase, then,” Seb sighed. “You’re dead, and this is what happens next. Welcome to the Underworld.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It does take some getting used to. Our sincerest condolences.”

“No, not the death thing,” Jack said, annoyed. “There’s no such thing as an afterlife.”

“We do have pamphlets, if that would help ease you into things,” Seb offered.

“I’ve died hundreds of times. This has never happened before.”

Seb had the nerve to look sceptical. “Are you sure?”

“Extremely,” Jack retorted. “Death and I, we’re practically childhood pals at this point. I die, there’s nothing, and then I wake up again. So stop this whole charade and tell me where I really am.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a different answer for you,” Seb said apologetically. “This is the Underworld. The Promised Land. The Nethersphere. Aka: where you go when you die. Would you mind filling out some forms? Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

Before Jack could tell him exactly where he could shove that stack of paperwork, everything went dark again.

* * *

“You really need to stop doing this,” Ianto said stiffly as he helped Jack up.

“It’s not as if I enjoy it,” Jack grumbled, brushing off the debris from the ship and wondering what the hell just happened.

“You should take up jogging,” Ianto suggested. “At least that way you’d have a better shot of outrunning danger. Or,” he added irritably, “you could just have a sense of self-preservation once in a while.”

“Did you see my body vanish?” Jack asked. “Like I had been teleported somewhere?”

Ianto shook his head. “No. You just lay there while I got to play the usual game of _‘Oh, I wonder if he’s going to wake up this time?’”_ His look of irritation vanished, replaced by concerned curiosity. “Why, did something happen?”

Jack grimaced. “I woke up in an office and a corporate drone told me that I was in the afterlife.” He smirked. “It really seemed more like your kind of place.”

“I’ll take your word for it. So you think something beamed you off the ship and then sent you back a few minutes later?”

“I can’t think of any other explanation.”

They were inside the car and making their way in the general direction of Roald Dahl Plass before the conversation continued. “How do you know that you weren’t?” Ianto asked.

“Weren’t what?”

“In the afterlife. Maybe it does exist. Plenty of cultures believe in one. Maybe there’s some kind of foundation behind it.”

Jack snorted. “Seriously? You really believe in that kind of thing?”

“Weirder things have happened to us,” Ianto pointed out.

“I’m pretty sure heaven doesn’t look like an investment bank.”

He shrugged. “Or maybe it’s your dying synapses conjuring up a hallucination.”

“That’s a more realistic explanation,” Jack agreed with a sigh. He leaned back in the passenger seat and tried to put the whole incident out of his mind.

* * *

About a month later, a Weevil skewered him with a piece of rebar and Jack found himself back in an office chair.

“Great,” he muttered, looking around the office. “This again.”

Seb, meanwhile, was visibly startled. “It’s you," he said, astonished. “The one who vanished. Well, I suppose this saves time on the explanation: you’re dead, welcome to the Nethersphere, are you being cremated?”

Jack emitted a growl of irritation. “If I’m going to hallucinate, why can’t I have one where I’m in Barcelona with a cool drink and a hot companion?” he complained.

“Not a hallucination, sorry,” Seb corrected him. “Though it _is_ rather unorthodox. I’ll need to alert management. Just a moment.”

“You’re not real!” Jack called after the man as he exited.

“Yes I am!” he retorted over his shoulder, and scurried down the hall.

Jack took the opportunity to examine the office. The only items on the desk were a stack of forms asking for information about next-of-kin, method of disposal of remains, and other dull information related to his apparent death. When he opened the desk drawer, all he found was a box of identical ballpoint pens.

The window, though… that was another story. 

Jack had visited all sorts of megacities in his life, and this one was… grey, mostly. It was a bit like being inside a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

And the whole place seemed very _human._ He could just barely see people through the windows in distant buildings (apparently no one had curtains here), and all of them were standard, ordinary humans dressed in late 20th or early 21st century Earth attire.

It was definitely not the kind of afterlife that Jack would have imagined on his own.

Faintly, he heard the clicking of heeled shoes approaching from down the hall.

The frosty burr of a Scottish accent drowned it out: “And _why_ was I not informed of this before?” a woman asked.

“I _did_ file a report!” Seb insisted weakly. “It was in file forty-seven-B-dash-theta—”

“Oh switch off,” she snapped. “I swear, it’s like talking to a calculator sometimes. Now where is—”

Jack caught sight of a figure dressed in black and a flash of red lipstick, but everything around him vanished into darkness before he could make out any details.

* * *

“I’m starving,” Jack complained later, once he was back at the Hub.

Gwen nudged over a carton of what turned out to be fried rice from a nearby takeaway place.

“You know,” Jack noted around a mouthful of food, “this whole thing is really annoying. Whatever happened to resting in peace?”

“Well, maybe it’ll give you added incentive to care about your own well-being,” Gwen noted sharply. “Even your subconscious is getting tired of you dying over and over again, apparently.”

He shook his head. “No, there’s something more to it… It’s full of people. Humans. Maybe it’s some kind of zoo…”

“Which you just happened to be teleported to without any of your injuries?”

“They could have brought me after I’d healed,” he pointed out, “and then returned me to the point in time immediately after I was taken.”

“Were your clothes damaged while you were there?” Gwen pointed at the bloodstained hole in Jack’s shirt.

“No,” Jack conceded.

“And from what you’ve said, it seems like your return wasn’t something they had any control over.”

“Which means it _can’t_ be the real afterlife—not that I ever thought it was,” he insisted in response to Ianto’s sceptical expression. “This is technology _—faulty_ technology. Can we, I don’t know, do a scan of the area?”

“We could try,” Ianto sighed. He snatched the carton of rice out of Jack’s hands. “That was _my_ dinner, by the way.”

“Hey, I was just _stabbed,”_ Jack protested. “Can’t I get a little sympathy?”

“No,” Gwen and Ianto replied in unison.

* * *

“Okay…” Jack murmured, looking at the sensors that were visible through the glass. “Not great.” He tapped his earpiece. “Guys? This whole chamber is about to be flooded with toxic gas in about twenty seconds. How far away are you?”

“Still trying to work our way through the hatch,” Gwen replied grimly. “I have a spare gas mask for you, at least.”

“How long till you reach me?”

“I don't know!” she snapped. “More than twenty seconds!” Her voice softened just a little. “I’m sorry.”

“Eh, I haven’t died in a few months,” Jack sighed as the vents in the chamber started hissing. “My winning streak was bound to run out eventually.”

He didn’t bother to cover his mouth. The next few minutes (hopefully not _too_ many) were going to be extremely uncomfortable, as he would die, revive, and then die over and over again until Gwen finally arrived to get him out.

“Deep breaths, everyone,” he said as his vision started to blur.

* * *

The next thing he saw when he opened his eyes was, instead of a drab office, a pleasant courtyard with a fountain at the center.

A flat “what” was all Jack could manage to say at first. He was sitting at a small table, with a tea set in front of him, and across from him was— 

“It seemed more polite to do it this way.” He recognised the voice from the last time he was in this so-called Afterlife, and could now put a face to it: a middle-aged woman in an Edwardian-era outfit that was a bit reminiscent of Mary Poppins, including the peculiar hat. “Welcome to Heaven, Jack Harkness.”

If he wasn’t suspicious before, he certainly was now. “You know who I am.”

Her eyes, which were an eerily pale blue, rolled in annoyance. “Well, let’s see: you’re in Heaven and I’m the one in charge… so no, why would I have the slightest _idea_ who you are?” She sipped her tea. “I would say ‘who you _were,’_ but I see you’ve still got that sticky case of immortality. What a shame: you’d make such an _exquisite_ corpse.”

She knew him. She knew way too much about him, and that meant that he had been brought here intentionally. “So I’m _not_ dead.”

She set her teacup down on its saucer and waved a hand dismissively. “Oh no, you’re very much dead at the moment. It’s wreaking havoc on our systems. But, since you seem to be flickering rather reliably right now, I thought I’d take the opportunity for a chat.”

“I’m going to wake up any second now.” In fact, at this point, Jack was impatient to get it over with, even if it meant choking to death all over again once he regained consciousness. 

“By my count, you’ve died and revived about six times in this conversation so far.” She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, and there you go again. Welcome back.”

“I was right here the whole time,” he protested, feeling even more uneasy.

“No, you weren’t. You just didn’t notice. Do you notice the moment of darkness when you blink? Of course you don’t. You humans never notice anything.”

Her dismissive patter was… familiar. Not her specifically—it was hard to mistake her accent and general haughtiness for anyone else—but there was _something_ about her that was going to nag at Jack until he got the answer. 

“Have you ever considered,” she said when it became clear that he wasn’t going to respond, “that if there was an evil version of you, he’d probably call himself ‘Jack Darkness’?” She took another sip of her tea. “Keep that in mind if you ever decide on a career change from all that tiresome do-goodery.”

“How do you know me?”

“I told you: this is Heaven—”

“No, it’s not,” Jack interrupted impatiently. “Leaving aside the fact that this is far from my preferred paradise, it’s also human-centric. _Earth-_ centric, 20th century. And I’m not from Earth _or_ the 20th century. Whatever it is that you’re doing, you’re targeting Earth. You’re targeting _me.”_

She emitted a snort of laughter. “Jack dearie, I can assure you, I was _not_ targeting you. In fact, I want you out of here as much as you do.”

Which meant that he was onto something. “And why is that?”

“Because you’re gumming up the works in a way that is almost as irritating as you are.” She reached over and tapped him on the tip of his nose. “Now stop being such a clever clogs and drink your tea.”

Jack eyed the teacup in front of him warily.

The woman snorted again. “Oh, come on, what’s it going to do, kill you?” She pushed the saucer a little closer to him. “Besides, it’s your favourite: dunaflower herbal, found only on the Boeshane Peninsula, brewed just like your mum made it while you and your brother fought over the ‘good’ cup—”

“Stop it,” Jack growled. Now that it was closer, the vaguely woodsy aroma of the tea reached his nose, bringing back memories of home and Gray and those precious few years before something came from out of the sky and Jack hadn’t held Gray’s hand tightly enough to keep him from— 

He swept the teacup off the table and heard it shatter on the flagstones.

The woman sighed. “You’re just committed to being unhappy, aren’t you? But I suppose you had a bad role model.” There was something a little more sly in her expression now. “As much as he plays favourites, though, I have at least one consolation: he held me in his arms when _I_ died.”

“Who did?”

“That was your one hint, Jack.” She waved a hand and another teacup appeared in front of him. “This is Heaven, but if you’re so keen on it being Purgatory instead, I’ll oblige. Do you want to know something really interesting?”

Jack stared at her in a stony silence.

She leaned in and smiled as though she was sharing a wonderful secret. “They’re all here, your friends,” she whispered. “Maybe you don’t believe me, but who knows, maybe you’re starting to have doubts. Doubts like: what if they didn’t just vanish when they died? What if they ended up here? What if they’re all sharing a plate of chips in the next room over, where you’ll never be able to go again? The ones you’ve loved and lost… and all of your former Torchwood pals: Alex, Suzie, Tosh, Owen, Ianto—” Her grin widened into something almost feral. “Whoopsy daisy, my mistake: Mr Jones’ time isn’t quite up _yet.”_

The mere _thought_ of something happening to Ianto was enough to jolt Jack out of his seat and tip over his new teacup in the process. “Who are you?” Jack demanded, doing his best to ignore the smell of coffee soaking into the tablecloth.

“Take a guess,” the woman said calmly. “I did give you a hint, after all.”

“You said that you died.”

“Nice to know that you _can_ listen when you put in the effort.”

Why would she have given him that hint?

He stilled. “I was there, wasn’t I?”

She nodded approvingly. “You were, in fact.”

_I’ve witnessed so much death, why would I be able to remember just one—_

_“He held me in his arms when_ _I_ _died.”_

A wave of horror passed through Jack, one colder and emptier than the void of space. “I thought you refused to regenerate,” he said, backing away from the table and the monster sitting across from him.

She made a little “jazz hands” gesture. “Surprise!”

Jack was trying not to panic, but an entire year’s worth of imprisonment and torture at the Master’s hands was still too deeply engrained for his body to not react with _some_ level of fear.

_What would the Doctor do?_

_“He held me in his arms when_ _I_ _died.”_

 _Bad example. Okay, what would the Doctor do if it was literally_ _anyone else_ _?_

_Figure out the plan. Remember as many details as possible. Then put it all together._

He took a deep breath and tried to recall everything he’d witnessed so far.

_This is technology. They’re pretending that this is Heaven. So what does that mean?_

“You’re collecting minds,” Jack said as the pieces began to fall into place. “You’re taking the consciousness of every person who died in the last few decades and convincing them that they’re in the afterlife—”

“Of course it’s the afterlife,” the Master objected. “They were alive and now they’re here. After. Life.”

“I’ve died dozens of times over the years. Why did I only start showing up here recently?” He was genuinely curious, but also knew that the answer would probably reveal more information.

She looked mildly annoyed. “It isn’t as though I _wanted_ you here. In fact, I took steps to prevent it.” Her tone of voice shifted into something eerily similar to the Doctor’s Lecturing Mode. “Think of it like a spam filter,” she explained. “It blocked your specific brainwaves, but then enough time passed to mutate them ever so slightly, and you slipped through. You weren’t supposed to reach that point for another thousand years or so—you must have had a _very_ interesting adventure, you naughty boy.” She tutted at him. “We’re fine-tuning things so that you won’t start turning up like a bad penny, but just in case: take care of yourself, Jack. I don’t want to see you back here.”

For the first time in the entire conversation, Jack felt himself smile. “Too bad, because the second I’m out of here I’m going to find the Doctor and fill him in on your latest plan.”

“No, you’re not.” She checked the bracelet on her wrist and smiled as well. “Our systems are back online, which means that when we send you back for good you’ll have a nice little memory wipe first. All you’ll remember is the usual: the cold and the dark. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she said sternly. “It’s standard operating procedure: we don’t want to spoil the surprise for everyone else, do we?” She winked and Jack shivered in spite of himself. “It was nice talking to you, Jack. See? I _can_ be sweet sometimes.” She sighed melodramatically. “Too bad you won’t remember it.”

Jack made a snort of derision. “Good luck with tha—”

* * *

“Your breath smells terrible,” Ianto said with a grimace once their lips parted. 

Jack smirked. “But you kissed me anyway.”

“I keep a spare toothbrush at my desk. First thing you’re doing when we get back is using it.”

“I’m surprised you only have one spare,” Jack snarked as he got in the car.

“Check the glove compartment,” Ianto ordered. “I think there are breath mints.”

Gwen was still smoothing things over with the Cardiff police (‘smoothing over’ in this case meaning ‘inventing a halfway plausible explanation for why a chocolate factory was connected to a subterranean bunker with a massive stockpile of chemical weapons’), so it was just Ianto and Jack in the car heading back to the Hub.

“I forgot to ask earlier,” Ianto said once they were properly on the road. “Did you have those hallucinations again?”

Jack blinked in surprise. “I didn’t.” It hadn’t occurred to him to even think about it… which was oddly troubling. “It went back to the usual.”

“By which you mean ‘nothing.’”

“Better than the alternative.”

“No, the _better_ option is that you don’t die again _at all,”_ he snapped, which was when Jack noticed the tiny lines of worry on Ianto’s face. “Every time,” he continued, “I try to reassure myself that it’ll be fine, that it’s happened so many times before in exactly the same way… but this was a change. And anything changing about it… you called yourself a ‘fixed point’ once, didn't you? If a fixed point changes…” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “What if you don’t come back?”

“It’s not like I haven’t wondered that myself,” Jack admitted. “Especially when it takes awhile to… happen.” All of the times when he lay somewhere, slowly bleeding to death or struggling to breathe air that wasn’t there anymore. “Even after all those years as a Time Agent, I don’t really understand how it works, so for all I know it’ll just stop one day. But I’m okay with that.”"

“Well, I’m not,” Ianto replied stiffly.

“I mean, obviously I want to keep on living,” he said, annoyed. “I’m just saying that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I—”

“Pointlessly sacrificed yourself?” 

“Pointlessly?” Jack repeated incredulously. “When have I ever _pointlessly—”_

“Fine.” Even though Ianto was keeping his eyes on the road, Jack was pretty sure that the scowl on Ianto’s face wasn’t because of the traffic. “Forget I said anything.”

“This is about _my_ life, you know. Why do you even—”

Suddenly, Ianto slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt stop. “Because you’re not the one who’ll be left behind!” he shouted.

Jack felt his chest tighten, both from the press of the seat belt and from the spark of anger those words elicited. “I’m _always_ the one left behind!” he yelled in reply. “Even when it’s a happy ending, I’m left behind! Even in the best-case scenario, even if we have everything we want together, at the end of it I’m going to be burying you!” He took a shaky breath and kept his eyes fixed on the windshield; it was easier to be honest that way. “I think about that every day. Every time I look at you. And the only thing that keeps me from going absolutely crazy is knowing that I’ll do everything I can to make sure that that day doesn’t come for a _very_ long time. All right?”

Jack was faintly aware that several vehicles around them were beginning to honk their horns in irritation at the car that was now blocking traffic in the middle of Cardiff, but he was too busy forcing himself to look Ianto in the eyes. It was always an awful conversation to have, and no matter how many times he’d had it over the years it never got any easier: the reminder to both of them that ‘growing old together’ was not an option for Jack. 

There was always a little light in their eyes that dimmed whenever they understood what he was trying to tell them, and Jack could see it fade away in Ianto’s.

Then, for a moment, Jack felt something else: a wave of dread while his mind imagined all of the light and life leaving Ianto’s eyes while Jack held him in his arms.

 _“He held me in his arms when_ _I_ _died,”_ a voice said, quietly and smugly—both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

But then the dread passed, and Jack focused on the current moment. “All right?” he repeated.

After a pause (during which Jack briefly considered jumping out of the car and running), Ianto hesitantly nodded. “All right.”

Jack knew that this was the prelude to a much longer conversation, one that was going to be even more complicated and would potentially force him to reckon with what precisely he meant by ‘best-case scenario,’ but that conversation was still in the future. 

For now, he would keep his mind on the present.

“So, _after_ I brush my teeth,” Jack said as their car resumed its drive back to the Hub, “what’s next?”

“A shower, I think.” 

Jack grinned. “For you or for me?”

He saw the corners of Ianto’s mouth twitch into an amused smile, which banished the lingering clouds of dread in his chest.

The present moment was going to be just fine, he reflected happily. There was plenty of time for the future.


End file.
